So, to fill you in on some details, here’s a “Top Ten List” – in no particular order – of fun factoids about Mexican beer….

1 – Even before the 16th-century Spanish conquest, the Aztecs – in what is now Mexico – were brewing a beer-like concoction, for both drinking and ceremonies, from fermented corn.

2 – When German immigrants arrived en masse in the 19th century, they looked to their tried-and-true European brewing styles such as lager. Moreover, Mexico’s Emperor Maximilian I – who even had his own brewer to make the Vienna-style dark beer he loved – belonged to the dynastic Habsburg family of Austria.

Corona – in the clear glass bottle – is Mexico’s #1 imported beer.

3 – Most Mexican beer today is pilsner style, named originally for the city of Plzen, near Prague, in what’s now the Czech Republic. Basically a pale lager, this style today is the most popular in the world.

4 – As of 2003, Mexico leapfrogged the Netherlands as the world’s biggest exporter of beer. And it’s no surprise that over 80% of Mexico’s exports cross the border into the US.

5 – Though there are scores of individual brands of Mexican beer out there, just two “umbrella” companies dominate 80+% of the market. One owns Tecate, Dos Equis, Bohemia and the Christmas-seasonal Noche Buena, among others; the second includes Corona, Negra Modelo and Pacifico.

6 – Corona is Mexico’s best-selling beer. (Guess all those ads, with the long-necked bottles topped with lime wedges – and especially the carefree beach chairs and secluded cove – did the trick!)

7 – Dos Equis, with its familiar “XX” label, dates back to 1897. The German-born brewer who created it named it “Siglo XX,” meaning “Century 20,” to celebrate the upcoming turn-of-the-calendar.

Even the “Most Interesting Man In The World” drinks it – or at least he did, before he got shipped off to Mars….

8 – Unlike their numerous and wildly popular US counterparts, microbreweries have yet to catch on in a big way in Mexico. Though a few pioneers are attempting to lead the way, there is immense competition from the big brands, which in turn are owned by the bigger mega-conglomerates.

9 – Being so light and refreshing, the typical Mexican beer fits really well into the world of cocktails. Try the popular Michelada: ice-cold beer with lime juice and ground chili pepper, with a Margarita-like rim of salt.

10 – Anyone who’s ever popped the top off a Mexican brew knows that the Spanish word for beer is cerveza. Except for Portuguese, where it’s the very similar cerveja, the words for “beer” in other Romance languages – bière in French, birra in Italian, even bere in Romanian (did you even know that it was a Romance language?) – sound more like the German bier, and of course beer in English.

Happy Cinco de Mayo again, my friends!

We have Ceres – the Roman goddess of grain, the harvest, and motherly love – to thank for cerveza (both the word and the brew), and for today’s Cinco de Mayo toasts.